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STATEMENT​ ON TRUMP EXECUTIVE ORDERS

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We are aware of the concerns many of our current and potential clients have regarding recent executive orders President Donald Trump issued shortly after taking office. We wanted to address these concerns in this post.

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Very briefly - President Trump, through executive order, revoked multiple executive orders signed by Presidents dating back to Lyndon Johnson. The revoked orders all served the expressed purpose of ensuring equal employment opportunity within the federal government by laying out various enforcement methods. For the most part, these units either provide a non-binding, pre-court method of resolving complaints before both the employee and government have to spend significant money litigating a case, or they advocate for workplace diversity.

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Revocation of these orders therefore only impact federal, state, and local government employees, as well as government contractors. None of these orders apply to private employees. While there is speculation that private employers may now also move to eliminate their internal equal employment policies (if they exist at all), that hasn't happened at any large scale yet, and we are again only discussing internal policies, not the law.

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Executive orders and internal company policies do not change the law. So all of the various federal, state, and local equal employment opportunity laws, such as the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Americans with Disabilities Act, etc., remain in full force and effect. These are the laws that both private and public employees sue their employers under, so for employees, the ability to sue has not changed.

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For public employees, it is unclear if the revocation of these orders will affect them at all. While internal watchdog and advocacy groups are clearly in danger of being dismantled (and that small group of employees should be concerned), the Agencies that enforce federal and state employee protections, like the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and the Georgia Commission on Equal Employment, remain in tact because their missions are dictated by law, not by executive order. And every employee, regardless of their status as a public or private employee, will not have their right to challenge a discriminatory employment practice taken from them unless laws are repealed, not executive orders. That would require congressional approval, which is extremely unlikely to ever happen.

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In summary - for private employees, nothing has changed. For public employees, there may be changes to how you pursue a discrimination and/or retaliation case, but the ability to pursue one - in whatever fashion - will not be eliminated.

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Please feel free to contact us if you have any further questions or concerns.